


We gotta go back

by archipelago41



Category: Cable (Comics), Cable and Deadpool
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Identity Reveal, Pretty Wade Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28940043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archipelago41/pseuds/archipelago41
Summary: Or ... the one where pretty!Wade is Bable's kind of literal future guardian and now has to tell Bable to come back to the future, sheesh.
Relationships: Nathan Summers & Wade Wilson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	We gotta go back

**Author's Note:**

> You know the thing where I said I could write Bable & co finding out about Split Second forever? Yeah. Here's another one.

They're having a quiet family afternoon. Nathan and Rachel are doing a jigsaw puzzle, but they're only allowed to move pieces with their minds. Scott thinks it's a good exercise for Nathan to use his powers more and not rely on the big guns. Rachel's been holding the puzzle in the air for the last five minutes. 

"Dad, you might want to go look outside the window," Rachel says, which is not as short as saying: there's a man we don't know, and he's just come through a portal that isn't a Krakoan gate, so he's probably not just a badly timed mutant tourist. Well, okay, that wasn't shorter at all. He's also extremely well-armed, Scott sees, when he looks, and not in the mostly-harmless multiple arm way. That might be a problem. 

The man has guns and swords, and Scott is literally about to call Logan to deal with him when the man just stares at the Summers House and yells, "< Askani'son, get out here and face me like a man! >"

He yells it in Askani. A man stepped through a portal looking for Scott's son, most certainly from the future, and this was probably inevitable.

A thousand jigsaw pieces clatter to the ground. 

Nathan looks like he wants the ground to swallow him up, and Scott sympathizes. He really does, but at the same time, Scott's the dad around here. "I'll handle it. Why is he after you?"

The house defenses are sufficient, but they're also a landing pad for visitors. It'll also be less messy outside, and Scott doesn't want to kill anyone, but this is his son. 

"No, uh," Nathan struggles. "He's not a threat." 

"You know him?" Well. That makes things easier. 

"He's here to make me go back," admits a teenager who is from a terrible future, and Scott has tried very hard to make peace with that, but Scott sets his jaw. 

Because they are polite mutants who can blow this man to bits, they invite him inside, and Scott insists that he drops the guns and swords and weapons before they sit down for a cup of coffee. Rachel absconds to the kitchen to float them coffee but also, probably, summon reinforcements. At a closer look, Scott can see that the man is about his own height, and his hair is paler, so he's probably blond. He's not scarred with any distinguishing features, not even the Askani eye scars that are supposed to echo Nathan's scars. His face is thin, a bit sunken, and his eyes look like Logan's when Scott catches him staring off into the distance some days. Like he's seen too much shit. He'd probably be extremely dangerous even without the weapons. His handshake is crushing, even though he looks like he's unsure what a handshake is. 

"That's really not necessary, Dad," Nathan insists. He's apologizing to the man, in hurried Askani--and this is more of it than Scott has heard in years, and Jean was always better at it. They both got the common tongue down in a few years, but Askani concepts tended to be intertwined with some psi-stuff, and Scott opted to not get more immersed in words that sometimes had a bit of charged telepathy underneath it. You needed to be at least slightly telepathic to be truly fluent in Askani. " < You don't have to >." 

"< I'll empty my pouches, but I'll keep a sword, >" the man offers, as a compromise. He has a number of weapons he dumps on the living room table, and if possible, he wears more little pouch bags than Nathan does. He keeps one thin sword across his lap, like he's worried that he might have to use it at some point, and well, Scott's eyes are itchy. Just a little. 

Scott nods. He really presses onto Jean that she and Logan should get down here, but he also clarifies that they don't seem in immediate danger. It's just. This is their son. 

"< You've hit a growth spurt. What are they feeding you? >," the man teases, and it's almost normal. It's the first thing he says to Nathan. Then he sighs with his whole body, like his disappointment isn't written on his face. "< You've got to come back >."

Nathan squares up against him, and he can stand eye-to-eye with his man, and Scott's heart tears, just a little. He's old enough to look men into the eye and put his back up, but he doesn't do the grimace as well as he would (will?) in the future. Nate wants to be grim, and he wants to be assertive, and Scott just wants Nathan to slow down on the growing up, just a little. 

"< I've traversed through the threads of time! I've got all the time in the world, >" Nathan argues. 

"< And how long will it before you're too old, Dayspring? >" The man answers, coldly. Calmly. Maybe it would have been better if he spat it, but it makes Cable flinch. " < People will notice when you come back five years older or more. Hell, you've already grown. You know you keep growing. Askani'son or not, they won't trust you the same way if you come back as tall as a mammoth and with snowy white hair. They'll go where you lead them, but they'll only be your soldiers. Tell me that _they_ can look at you the same way when you're not young. >" 

The man turns to look at Scott, and his eyes meet Scott's visor without hesitation. That look is definitely something he's seen Logan level before, the look of the old and weary, the kind of thing that people who have seen not just a lot of shit, but too much shit level. Cable's given that to Scott, a time or two. Still, it hits Scott. 

How does this man know how tall Cable gets?

"He's my son," Scott interrupts, and if he didn't only see red, he might have started. It doesn't occur to Scott that he might have needed to pick a language that wasn't English. "I think he gets a say." 

"Of course he does," and the man laughs. His voice is raspy, and he just keeps laughing and laughing for ten, twenty of the longest seconds Scott has ever lived through. It's English. He's spoken English the whole time unless he's slipped into one of their heads and picked it out. His voice rises. "But unless he plans to die, and somehow come back younger, he's not going to be able to stay. I'd like to avoid that!"

A small part of Scott thinks, he could do that. He could do exactly that. 

"You speak English," Nate says, shocked. "You speak English?" 

"Yep, since before you were born, honestly." 

"What's all this racket," Logan demands, and he has his claws out. The man doesn't even flinch at the sight of Wolverine crashing in, flanked by Jean and Rachel, which puts a chill up Scott's spine. Logan sniffs and he puts a pair of claws right under the man's chin, and Scott... really had to ask for his name, huh. "Why do I know your smell?" 

"What do I smell like? Oh, oh, I know this game! Can't be the maple syrup that flows out of my ass." The man grins, a bit maniacally. "C'mon, you don't recognize me? Logan, buddy, pal, I'm hurt." 

"I ain't your buddy." Logan's gruff, but he doesn't press. He sniffs again. "Wade!?" 

"There we go! Not that I mind you up in my face, but I don't think Marvel Girl over there will like cleaning my blood out of her floors." He waves. "Hi Jean." 

"Hello?" Jean frowns.

Logan puts the claws away. He leans back and then sits on the table. A few of the guns clatter to the ground. "Why are you here, Wade? Didn't we let you visit the island like a normal person? You gotta come here?" 

"You're not horribly disfigured," Scott says, confused. He doesn't care why, honestly. That's a new one, and it's not an image projection. "There must have been a better way to get back to Staten Island." 

"No. I know it takes a couple of thousand years to get my self-esteem back up from the ego hit you just gave me, ouch," Deadpool (!?) quips. And it. It is definitely Deadpool. "And also about that long for my healing factor and my brain to say I deserve to be a little bit pretty again. I'm definitely gamier than the dude on that throne. " 

The cogs in Scott's head turn. 

"What the fuck, Deadpool," Rachel says, very succinctly. "Why are you trying to drag my brother back into the future?" 

"He told me to! And what am I going to do, _not_ listen to my best pal?" 

"I didn't," Nathan says, confused. "You're Deadpool? I thought your name was Tidepod!" 

Tide...pod.

Silence.

Deadpool just laughs. "Do you know how long I've been waiting for you to get that joke? It's so good. You gotta set up all your own jokes in the future. It's terrible. But yeah, you did. Well, big you. I listen to big Cable."

"You do?" Scott says, incredulously. He refrains from asking when Cable asked him to do this. And if he ever listened to Cable. 

"Okay, maybe not all the time, like when he's being dumb and suicidal." Deadpool shrugs, and he juggles a set of knives. Knives he just picked up from the table. "But more than Bable over there, which is none of the times. Priscilla says you've got to go back, I'll drag you back. You know you gotta do it anyway, timey-wimey, trouserpants." 

A series of expressions flash across Nathan's face, and he raises a finger to just process that this man is Deadpool. How long has he known him? 

"Just about ... all my life," Nate answers, weakly. Scott is used to getting answers to his thoughts, but this is not one he wanted to know. "He's been my shield since I can remember. 

What. Does that mean? Not to intrude on Nathan having a crisis, but what does that mean?

Jean tells him [if you figure it out, let **me** know! Because that sounds ... strange]

"You _talk_ to my older self? Which one!?"

"You got to be more specific on that one. It's not like _I_ keep track. But if I can't take a bullet for you, who can?" Deadpool shrugs. "So, when are you coming back? You want a week? Two? What's the plan?" 

"I mean," Nathan says. "I can stay as long as I want. We've got resurrection on Krakoa." 

"Oh, right. You can do that? Okay. Sure. I guess I'll... be here until you decide on that. I'd rather you _not_ die, but I've done it, and it's not that bad, so," Deadpool looks up and out of the window. His eye might be teary. "Do you know how long it's been since I've had a good taco?"

The horror of multiple Deadpools existing hits Scott, and it is only slightly better than him stealing Scott's son away.


End file.
